UK Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

TerraN_EmpirE said:

whoops wrong thread Should have been the Australian

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Jura said:

whatever thread, just tell me what I need to know about modern refueling will you?

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UK extends RWUAS activity with Leonardo

• 
  

• 03 MARCH, 2017
  
• SOURCE: FLIGHTGLOBAL.COM
  
• BY: CRAIG HOYLE
  
• LONDON

The UK Ministry of Defence has signed a two-year contract extension with Leonardo to continue research and development into a rotary wing unmanned air system (RWUAS) for use during maritime operations.

Worth £8 million ($9.8 million) and jointly funded by the two parties, the second phase of the RWUAS capability concept demonstrator activity will build on the results of an earlier round of work conducted between 2013 and 2015. These culminated with an optionally piloted development of AgustaWestland’s Polish-built SW-4 helicopter, dubbed Solo, participating in the Royal Navy’s Unmanned Warrior exercise last year.

AgustaWestland

Leonardo says: “The contract aims to identify, develop and exploit the opportunities offered by emerging technologies, to reduce costs and increase the agility, flexibility, resilience and persistence of national military equipment and capability in the rotary-wing area.”

Technologies which will be further investigated during phase two include those related to sense-and-avoid and collision avoidance, bandwidth management and data dissemination, powerplants, propulsion and drive systems, Leonardo says. It will also develop “outline concepts for future VTOL [vertical take-off and landing] UAS for commercial, military and para-public applications”.

Beyond the potential application of such technologies on an unmanned rotorcraft, Leonardo says they also could be incorporated in to manned types “to enhance capability, delivery and operational safety”.

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Despite a

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and a plummeting pound, the

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-American defense relationship remains strong, said the senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence.

“Under any circumstances, we’re going to continue to work very, very closely with the States,”

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, Permanent Secretary of the UK Ministry of Defence, told reporters this morning. “Whatever is going on in the political backdrop over here, I think we’ll keep on working on, really.”

Lovegrove is in D.C. for his first visit in his current job, which he took last year. (He previously visited as permanent secretary of the

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). He and his aides admitted the trip was complicated by the sheer number of vacant positions in the Trump Pentagon,

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. As reporters were led through the British Embassy after the roundtable, we noted a diagram of Trump appointees — with at least one recent withdrawal prominently crossed out.

“I wanted to come over here anyway,” Lovegrove said, “because the relationships and the relationship is vastly more important and enduring than any one or two given individuals. There is just a continuum of activity and discussion we need to maintain no matter who is in place or who isn’t in place.”

Closer to home, arguably Britain’s biggest problem is the decline of the pound, which has lost

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since last June’s referendum vote to

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. That’s been a boon to British tourism and exports, but it’s potentially problematic for the Ministry of Defense, which imports much of its equipment. Major UK purchases include the US-made

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and

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patrol plane, as well as the missile compartment for the Dreadnought strategic nuclear deterrence submarines, which are being built in tandem with the American

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.

“More than any other UK. department, a lot of our kit is denominated in foreign currency… particularly dollars,” Lovegrove acknowledged, but “we have a very prudent hedging program with the Bank of England and the Treasury, so we feel pretty comfortable we’ve managed to mitigate most of the currency risk there.”

Specifically, the MoD contracts with the Bank of England to buy dollars and euros on a future date at today’s market rates (what’s called forward buying); that way, it still has enough foreign currency to make planned purchases even if the pound drops. There is some impact from the current currency fluctuations, Lovegrove said, but the impact is in “low tens of millions” out of a £36.5 billion annual budget.

According to

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, the UK spends 2.21 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on defense. That’s just above the alliance’s target of 2.0% and in third place after Greece (2.38%) and the United States (3.61%). Almost every American president since Eisenhower has urged NATO’s European members to spend more, but Trump has been the most strident on the subject, at one point in the campaign suggesting he might not fulfill treaty commitments to

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against invasion unless “

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.”

Since then, though,

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and

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have strongly defended NATO, even as they repeat the call for 2% spending — which the UK supports, Lovegrove emphasized. “It’s obviously been reinforced by Sec. Mattis as well as by the president, but it’s (also) been reinforced by our Secretary of State, it’s been reinforced by our Foreign Secretary, by our Prime Minister.”

The British government also agrees with the administration that NATO needs to reform. In particular, Lovegrove said, the alliance must increase its rapid response forces and streamline the current cumbersome, consensus-based process for making decisions in a crisis.

NATO’s crisis response capability is increasingly important for Britain given that British troops will soon deploy to the front lines to

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. A British armored cavalry squadron will go to Poland as part of a US-led battalion, and a British-led battalion will go to Estonia, the tiny Baltic State that has so far

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the most of any NATO member from Russian cyber-attack. A German-led battalion will go to Lithuania, a Canadian-led one to Latvia, with each of the four battalion task forces over a 1,000 strong. A British advance contingent is already in Estonia to set up communications systems, Lovegrove said, and the full force will be deployed in another month or two.

“It’s a substantial deployment: a battalion is 800-850 people,” Lovegrove said, “(though) I don’t think it takes away from our ability to operate in other parts of the world.”

“Let’s not mischaracterize this,” he said. “It’s not the British Army of the Rhine,” the multi-division force stationed in West Germany during the Cold War. “It’s not meant to be the answer to absolutely everything that could conceivably happen up there…It’s a statement of support and intent.”

“We need to understand

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that are

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or

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to our troops in Estonia,” Lovegrove said. “It is clear that

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doctrine has developed…into a blurring of peacetime and wartime activity, a blurring of what constitutes home and away, what constitutes the limits of risk that they are prepared to contemplate.”

“Their risk appetite has gone up quite a lot

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,” Lovegrove said.

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Britain has awarded £153 million (US $187 million) worth of contracts to equip the Falkland Islands with a new ground-based air-defense system known as Sky Sabre, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.

A clutch of deals agreed around the turn of the year but only now becoming public includes award of a contract by the British to an Israeli company to supply a key battlefield command-and-control network to defend the South Atlantic island from potential Argentinian aggression.

The main contract award, which the MoD valued at £78 million (US $95 million), was signed Jan. 9 with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, to develop a battle management, command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (BMC4I) network.

Missile builder MBDA and surveillance radar supplier Saab have also been awarded contracts to integrate other, already ordered, ground-based air-defense system elements into the BMC4I.

Rafael, with help from UK partners Babcock, will supply its Modular, Integrated C4I Air & Missile Defense System and associated equipment in a development and manufacture phase likely to be completed around 2020.

Babcock will provide a proportion of UK based activity including: synthetic based test and integration facilities, project management and hardware procurement.

The percentage of UK work content on BMC4I is put at 40percent with the remainder coming from Israel.

The requirement is to deliver a ground-based air defence (GBAD) capability along with an initial support solution for up to 5 years. As part of the agreement, Rafael will serve as key systems integrator, including provision of communications links and integration with existing in-service communications infrastructure.

The Israeli’s secured the deal on the back of delivering the best technical solution for the best value for money, said an MoD official.

Nevertheless, industry executives in Europe reacted angrily to the award of the BMC4I system to the Israeli contractor.

“Everybody was extremely surprised the MoD opted for Rafael. Politically, industry thought that was a route the UK government wouldn’t go down. It’s something other MoD’s, like the Israeli or French, would never have done. It makes you wonder just what parts of the local defense industry the government is willing to defend,” said the executive, who asked not to be named.

Doug Barrie, the senior air analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank in London said he was puzzled by the decision.

“At least on paper this looks like a sensitive area to award to a non-NATO or non-European partner. I’d have thought the government might have wanted to stay closer to home with this technology, as it arguably comes into the territory of sovereign operational capability,” said Barrie.

Concerns have also been raised by executives here about sharing sensitive Land Ceptor missile data with the Israeli company, which is itself a significant missile developer.

An MoD spokeswoman said the department had addressed the issue in the contract.

“Appropriate non-disclosure agreements are in place between the participating companies, along with safeguards around sensitive information and what needs to be shared,” said the spokeswoman.

Land Ceptor is currently in development led by the British arm of MBDA. The weapon is part of the Common Anti-Air Modular Missile family, the naval version of which has also been ordered by the Royal Navy.

MBDA was one of the bidders for the BMC4I requirement. Lockheed Martin , Northrop Grumman, Thales and Saab were also thought to have lodged bids.

Rafael is no stranger to the British, or its potential Argentinian adversary.

The company secretly supplied Spike missiles to the British Army starting around 2007 to help combat terror groups in Iraq and Afghanistan and also developed the Litening targeting pod used by the Royal Air Force.

The Israeli company has also supplied the Argentinian forces with missiles in the past.

Britain and Argentina fought a short but bloody war over the islands in 1982, and the dispute concerning sovereignty of the territory, known in Buenos Aires as the Malvinas, continues to rumble on diplomatically, although relations between the two Governments have improved since President Mauricio Macri came to power at the end of 2015.

The British defend the islands with a force including Typhoon jets, an offshore patrol vessel, a ground-based air-defense system and infantry.

The BMC4I order is the final major element of a more than two-year program aimed at beefing up the Falkland ground-based air defenses currently reliant on the aging Rapier ground-to-air missile.

MBDA secured a deal to supply the British Army with a new ground-to-air weapon, known as the Land Ceptor, at the end of 2014, and that was followed several months later by the MoD acquiring additional Giraffe surveillance radars and updating existing sensors in a deal with Saab.

A spokeswoman for the MoD said the latest batch of orders includes a £31 million deal with MBDA to integrate Land Ceptor into the battlefield management system and an £8 million deal with Saab to integrate their Giraffe radar.

The spokeswomen said a further £31 million in contracts had also been awarded to purchase additional Land Ceptor missile launchers and a UK-based training system.

The Argentines have for several years been trying to modernize a combat jet force made up of A-4 Skyhawks and Super Etendards, so far without success.

Last month, the Argentine government announced the suspension of efforts to procure fighter aircraft, putting an end to rumors about talks to buy Kfirs from Israel and MiG 29s from Russia.

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FORBIN said:

Tornado with 4 Storm Shadow/SCALP !
View attachment 36862

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Bernard said:

I've always love the look of the Tornado! Such a mean looking war machine. Definitely in my top 5 coolest a/c
1. F-22
2. F-15
3. Tornado
4. SU-35
5. Fx-23

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FORBIN said:

And Rafale

Atack aircraft are less nice in general and clearly F-35 is in this category.

Me
1. F-22
2. Rafale

And Su-34 he get a look !

After more difficult but i don' t like much Typhoon front view with air inlets fairly square also canards very forward and the F-35 with a unusual look/design fat fuselage, small wings, big reactor not elegant especially seen from the back coz reactor it is a fighter very compact for several reasons... especialy build for 3 Air Services whose mainly the B variant different but i hope efficient.

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